Swedish Central Ethics Review Board finds Macchiarini guilty of misconduct, requests retraction of 6

Sorry, if this question seems stupid, but I never heard of this Macchiarini before - interesting!

Is there a connection to ME? Or is there another intention (e.g. with respect to the Lancet and its quality)?

 

Has this been covered on retraction watch?

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05565-4

 

The Lancet is retracting!

The Lancet: The final verdict on Paolo Macchiarini: guilty of misconduct

In this issue, we are retracting two papers by Paolo Macchiarini and co-authors after receiving requests to do so from the new President of the Karolinska Institute (KI), Ole Petter Ottersen.

ETA: I am tagging you @dave30th as you might find this of interest

 

Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks, @Cheshire

 

That piece from the Lancet was rather less than soul searching.

Here's their earlier coverage:

2015: Paolo Macchiarini is not guilty of scientific misconduct
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)00118-X/fulltext

2016: Paolo Macchiarini—science in conflict

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00341-X/fulltext

The Lancet takes an 'innocent until proven guilty' approach to scientific misconduct by researchers, seemingly while doing all they can to avoid investigating concerns about their work.

 

So does this suggest the PACE authors have to be found guilty of misconduct by their medical bodies to get PACE retracted?

How do we make this happen?

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1015535784483610624

https://twitter.com/user/status/1015536479030964224

https://twitter.com/user/status/1015536585390125056

 

Karolinska institutet, where Macchiarini worked, has now had an investigation and it seems the new Rector of the institute, Ole Petter Ottersen, is under suspicion for research misconduct. He was a co-author on a paper in Journal of Neuroscience in 1999, about a specific brain receptor, and three pictures seems to have been duplicated in the same paper. He is highly respected and was hired to get the institute back on track after the Macchiarini-commotion.

What a mess..

Khrono: Dagens nyheter: Ottersen mistenkt for forskningsfusk
google translation: Ottersen suspected of research fraud

 

And the mess continues.
According to a new book about the Macchiarini scandal, the documentation for its investigation has vanished..

Universitetsavisa: Dokumentasjonen til Macchiarini-granskningen har forsvunnet
Google translation: The documentation for the Macchiarini investigation has disappeared

 

Long blog post on some events around the Macchiarini scandal, including events involving COPE.

https://forbetterscience.com/2019/0...-at-the-lancet/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

 

Didn't the Lancet publish a similar piece about how Wakefield was unjustifiably attacked and that they stand by the paper?

Almost looks like a pattern if you look for, oh... about 3-4 seconds.

 

Paywall, https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6676

 

Swedish media reports that the whistle blowers in the Macchiarini case are now seeking compensation.

The so-called whistleblowers in the Macchiarini scandal at Karolinska Institutet are now demanding compensation from the state. These are the researchers who alerted that the surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was cheating on research and results of transplants with artificial trachea.

The whistleblowers think that they were subjected to reprisals after they alerted about Macchiarini and that they never had the opportunity to defend themselves.

- Karolinska has invested all its gun powder on trying to smear us in different ways. And probably that kind of reprisal will be lifelong, ”says Oscar Simonson.

Sveriges radio: Visselblåsarna i Macchiarini-fallet kräver ersättning av staten
google translation: The whistle blowers in the Macchiarini case demands compensation from the government

 

This is announced by the Public Prosecutor's Office today in a press release. It describes how new interrogations were held during the continued preliminary investigation and new written evidence was collected.

- It has become clear to me that the interventions were carried out in violation of science and proven experience and therefore did not form part of any legal form of healthcare or licensed research study. The interventions, which have caused the three plaintiffs serious physical injuries and great suffering, have thus been carried out completely without legal support. I make the assessment that the three interventions are therefore to be assessed as aggravated assault rather than causing bodily injury, aggravated crime, says Mikael Björk in the press release.

Dagens Medicin: Paolo Macchiarini åtalas
google translation: Paolo Macchiarini is being charged

 

Nature Swedish research misconduct agency swamped with cases in first year

Quotes:
Experts had warned that the nascent agency could be overwhelmed, and say that the high number of cases could be down to researchers feeling more comfortable about reporting suspicions to an independent agency than to their own institutions, as they did under the previous system.

...


Sweden created the agency after trust in its science was shaken by the case of star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, formerly at the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Macchiarini was eventually found guilty of misconduct relating to trials of an experimental trachea-transplant method, after being cleared by three in-house investigations that were later deemed to be flawed by an independent investigation commissioned by the institute.

Following the scandal, an inquiry led by Margaretha Fahlgren, a literature researcher at Uppsala University, suggested that Sweden establish a government body to handle allegations of serious research fraud — defined as fabrication, falsification or plagiarism — at publicly funded institutions. In 2019, parliament passed a law to define research misconduct and establish the NPOF. The agency began operating in January 2020.

In its first-year report, the NPOF said that 30 of the 46 cases it investigated concerned medicine, health and natural sciences — although it received referrals from all research areas except agricultural science and veterinary medicine. The 46 cases included 56 incidents of alleged misconduct, with 10 relating to fabrication, 18 to forgery, 18 to plagiarism and 10 about other matters.